Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

I'm just coming off 19,000 miles, 3 countries, and both coasts of the US (back and forth twice) in a 5 week period. I met lots of new people, and noticed a trend that interestingly reflected a concept Craig Rosenberg, The Funnelholic, and I presented at our case study session at SiriusDecisions Summit -- Social Surround.

It's not new, and wasn't coined by us, but Social Surround is the technique of using every social platform available to connect to your colleagues and prospects. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, you name it. The more you connect, and the more you share with them or about them, the more you build that relationship. Let's face it, a retweet by any means is flattering.

Here's a surround scenario for you:

I met the director of Demand Gen for a software company a few months back, brief handshake, intro and card exchange. There wasn't an immediate need for Green Leads work at the time...nurturable

That night I sent an email with the contact info of a mutual colleageue we both knew from years ago that he had fallen out of touch with

I then linked to him on LinkedIn

From LinkedIn, I found his twitter handle, and followed him. Hopefully he monitors his new followers.

I notice his company tweets something retweetable, and give it a retweet. Maybe he'll notice

He's an avid LinkedIn Update poster. So I liked a post

Saw he was on the attendee list of #SDsummit, so sent a "Look forward to seeing you at the event" email

Fast forward to the SiriusDecisions Summit. Craig and I are in the case study presenting the Social Surround concept, and who's sitting in the middle row smiling? Yep. He comes up to me afterwards and told me how he personally experienced Social Surround by me and had come to the conference with the intent of talking with me about a b2b appointment setting project. Now that he knew the concept had a term and it worked, he was sold--surrounded and sold.

Benefits of Social Surround:

Passive branding

Ongoing networking

Rapport building the social way

Non-intrusive to the prospect

Multiple touch points

Warms up outbound activies

Can trigger inbound responses

ps. What I like the most with Social Surround is that I'm seeing the prospects surrounding me. That is the ultimate Inbound Lead!

Sometimes I think George Lucas just didn’t “get it” when he made the Star Wars prequels. You know, the “other” Star Wars movies? He had made the greatest trilogy in the world in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. For years, with fans clamoring for more movies, Lucas said that either he wasn’t ready to make them or the technology in cinematography just wasn’t ready. Then stars aligned and he was ready to make the rest of his story; three movies to be set before Episode IV (1977), to tell the story of how things led up to where they did. To fans of the original trilogy, Lucas fell woefully short with Episodes I-III. He didn’t get that what made the original movies was story, not special effects. Sure, the newer movies had better effects, but the end result was miserable.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on Twitter, specifically in the B2B Sales and Marketing arena, you’re sure to see some people on there that deliver fantastic information. This is information that I’m very thankful for, as are my colleagues in the industry. However, with all of the good, there are still some on Twitter who just don’t “get it.” I’d like to share with you some ideas on how you can “get it” and keep yourself from becoming a Demand Gen Twit:

Remember, it’s not always about you -- If there’s one thing that burns me up about Twitter, it's the people who are shameless self-promoters. SHAMELESS. Twitter is a great self-promotion tool, however, it’s an even better word-of-mouth tool. It’s one thing to tweet about something you’ve done or your most recent blog entry, but it’s another if someone else does it for you. What does that mean for you? It means you’ve got to be writing great content. Keep in mind what Chris Brogan says: “[promote] the heck out of others”

Start the conversation-- One of the best parts about Twitter is the ability to have long-running conversations with a bunch of people. That’s a great way to share new ideas (and get some, too) while keeping in mind my first point. Get involved and get people talking. A number of people do this well; and for a great example, check out Mack Collier’s blog chat (#blogchat) that occurs most Sunday nights.

Learn -- If there’s one thing that I love about Twitter, it’s that for the most part the folks that “get it” share a wealth of new information -- new information that is relevant to you because others finding and sharing it have similar interests to you. The opportunity to have great content and data at my fingertips, throughout any part of my day, is exciting for me. The more you read, the more you’ll be able to share, and the more you share, the more you’ll keep yourself from becoming another Twit.

There are a lot of ways to be a better B2B tweeter, and these ideas are for me as much as they are for you (maybe even more so). So, help me keep the conversation going, and share with the rest us some other ways we can keep from being a Twit.

Today's B2B University, sponsored by Silverpop, was a great turnout. My estimate was 150 or so. Great networking and information sharing. Glad to have met everyone I met. If we didn't meet but you wanted to...shoot me a message.

During the session (despite the wireless being up and down all afternoon) I collected what I thought were the top 20 tweets from the crowd:

If someone has already written about this, forgive me. But twice in the past few weeks the discussion of real time search came up and how it might touch b2b demand gen. Today, unless someone is searching in multiple places -- Google, Twitter Search, Facebook Search and others -- they will never find the trending topics that people are talking about. When someone goes to Google and types "appointment setting," don't you want your organic results on the left and your real time social media posts on the right? I do.

Dear Google,

Please blend Organic Search and Real Time Search on one page. Better, create algorithms that will show real time results from people "like me," not just from topics that sound or look like I'd like them. Personally, I'll love it. Professionally, I can see demand gen goodness for inbound marketing all over it. It will allow my prospects to find me in multiple different ways, and allow my real time content to be as valuable as my static content -- even if those searching aren't into Twitter or Facebook.